


How to break out of your life's daily grind, and start your new career

by OrangeDodge



Series: How to Make Friends and Influence People, A Wayfinder's Guide [1]
Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Aqua's Catharsis, But someone has to do it, Gen, Keyblades, Possible KH3 Spoilers, being a light in the darkness is a lousy job, wayfinders
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-28
Packaged: 2019-10-01 23:20:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17253284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrangeDodge/pseuds/OrangeDodge
Summary: When seeking new employment, it is always important to consider your own goals. Not only in how you can benefit the organization, but also in how the organization can be made to work for you.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've had ideas about where Aqua goes next since Dream Drop Distance came out, though most of my inspiration here comes from 0.2, and my slow epiphany that Aqua's arc is an inversion of Riku's. 
> 
> I've taken a lot of visual inspiration from the Kingdom Hearts III trailers, but I've made no effort to guess their actual context. This work should be spoiler free, therefore, but I've tagged it appropriately just to be safe. 
> 
> I've chosen to have the timeline jump around a bit, between different stages of her journey. Hopefully I was successful.

 

 

**1.**

 

“Come on out and play, Ventus.”

 

Vanitas was on rooted on the ground floor of Aqua's castle, alongside Aqua herself. He issued his weapon, Void Gear, held out in apparent threat. Predictably she made no response, still lying asleep—and as battered then as she was in his memory—on the hardwood flooring that spanned his field of view. That same blank stillness was found throughout every room and hallway beyond, with the castle not reacting to his display any more than its master had. But the play wasn't meant for her benefit.

 

The masked boy was anchored before two images, watching them clash and overlap, stalemated as they were in waging their shifting war upon his perceptions. Wrapped behind him and around him was a stretch of featureless white tile, the same that filled each of the empty rooms of the castle labyrinth. Parting the air before him, where oblivion was straining against Aqua's heart's presence, hung a spider's web of cracks.

 

Light bled from one fracture to another, rippling through many staggered curtains, parting the maze of illusions just enough to allow him to look through them and into a facsimile of their past. It was back behind that row of shattered windows that he saw the Land of Departure's throne room. It stood as it once had, as both Vanitas and the castle's master remembered it.

 

Ventus remained deep asleep, posed on the central throne.

 

Vanitas brandished his will against his own memory. It was a continued battle to hold it before him, the knowledge that even that glimpse of the past wasn't fully real. With each slow, regular, breath that Ventus took, the boy in the mask forced himself to constantly disbelieve his eyes.

 

His other half wasn't there—not yet.

 

Only an echo, for now.

 

But an echo that would deafen him, if he gave in to it. That reminder was a drum beat, a mantra spoken into his thoughts from nothing and, for the moment, it was only just enough to overwhelm the lies that tried to deceive him.

 

The castle itself was merely a conduit for the magic of the Key that had given it form, and that Key was bound to Aqua's heart. It had placed an image of the sleeping boy before him, in accordance with their shared desire to see him again, crafting a scene blended from Aqua's living memory and Vanitas' lingering impression of the only part of her world he had ever actually visited: the castle itself, before the land was sealed away into oblivion.

 

So long as he remained in her proximity, he believed the castle would mistake his desires for a part of Aqua's own heart's, owing to the connection Xehanort had cultivated between them. Through the connections she herself had forged, as she bound herself to the other half of each of their hearts, her magic would continue to draw out their memories wherever they mirrored each other. And even so his mind might still be lost should his remnant leave her side.

 

He forced himself again to remember that, to not stray across the shattered threshold and into the past.

 

But she was defending Ventus, his doubts shouted, threatening to overpower his reason.

 

She didn't grasp Rainfell in her hand, but the panels of its barrier still flickered as they divided the two halves of the room. She was fighting him. Taunting him.

 

Stopping him from reaching Ventus.

 

His grip shook.

 

She didn't know he couldn't. She didn't know. _She couldn't know_.

 

He had brought her here too early for that. _This_ Aqua was days away from claiming her world's Key, from breaking the χ-blade and Ventus with it, from locking her friend safely away behind a maze of mirrors and phantoms. This Aqua's intent to thwart him was little more than a dream, just like he wanted. Her heart didn't know anything else, but what instinct alone could tell it.

 

It was just instinct, he told himself, as her barrier flowed between them.

 

Instinct to shield Ventus from danger.

 

Aqua's wayfinder glowed dimly in the color of fresh limes, poorly hidden in its place beneath her sleeve. Even in her state, it was drawing too heavily on her connection to her friend to stay hidden, as its light soothed her resting heart.

 

And it was responding not only to her mind, but to _his_ as well, coloring her heart with the impressions that flavored his thoughts, as the castle shimmered before them. As Aqua's magic continued to paint a picture of his malice, Vanitas was only trapping himself in his own desires. The longer he stayed, the farther he allowed her glass star to guide him astray.

 

Vanitas held on—for the moment victorious, diminished but still triumphant—but even so, his temptation stood, beyond any he had known. Such a simple thing it would be, for him to give in and throw down Void Gear. He could already see himself, in the warping reflections of his visor, braving oblivion to approach the high wood throne. In the end, it was only his broken, wretched, state that saved him. It was only knowing that nothing could come of it, that there could be no joining until they were both restored, that stopped him.

 

“Ventus. Come _on_ , Ventus. You sure you want to just sit there?”

 

He was never more thankful for his mask. He could never have hidden the frustrated slips of his face without it.

 

Vanitas held Void Gear, raised high, in preparation to bring it stabbing down and through Aqua. He had posed himself, just like he had on that day in the Keyblade Graveyard, years ago. It was an empty threat as he was, but still he felt the phantom of his muscles tensing, as the castle remembered them for him. It told his false body that he was held taut, exhausted, his limbs heavy with anticipation.

 

He stood frozen, holding himself exactly as he had the day that Aqua killed him. The maze had trapped him in the past, and to this point he had been its accomplice. He offered himself as bait, measuring the risk of eternal sleep, against the anticipation of finding Ventus with him. He waited for the boy to make the next move. The same threat had provoked a reaction in his other half's heart, the first time. Why should it not, a second?

 

He waited for the memory to live again. He waited for Ventus' heart to join the play they had put on for it. He waited for the scream of anger, the draw and flash of Wayward Wind. He waited for the true Ventus to wake up, to leave his hiding place behind. To charge down the white hall and face him, to _pick up where they left off_.

 

Nothing answered him.

 

He had waited for so long—formless, adrift and forgotten.

 

He had waited too long.

 

There was nothing.

 

“No last words for good old Aqua?” he asked, wishing the castle— _Aqua_ —would let him move, even as he thanked his survival to the fact it wouldn't. “Nothing? Really?”

 

The brilliant green of Ventus' own wayfinder still flared beyond the cracks in memory's facade. It lit the air evenly, flickering against the shifting violet panes of Aqua's barrier. Illusion or not, when he looked at that light he felt _Ventus._ It was as though the boy's heart were bursting out of his chest. In its light, Vanitas could truly feel the sun warming his skin beneath his black costume.

 

But then, when he focused hard enough, he could follow the trail of heat rising from the charm in Aqua's sleeve. It too glowed with a warmth that felt like Ventus, as one star mirrored the other.

 

He could imagine his other half, bright and alive, but still hidden somewhere deep away. What he couldn't feel was will. There was no mind to direct the shining light, leaving just an empty reflection, a phantom of Ventus, strung together by the memories of someone who loved him.

 

There was none of the growth from one second to the next that defined a true heart. There was nothing behind the fractured curtain of illusions save for more memories frozen in time, lit by a charm that marked them as more an extension of Aqua's will to protect Ventus, than as part of Ventus himself.

 

The green star may as well have been blue, in the end.

 

The twin illusions—of white floors and walls, of the carved throne room beyond—remained the same. It was only what he expected to see, as he let his desire run loose. It was only what Aqua wished to see, as her heart chased its own ghosts.

 

If anything were left of Ventus himself, if the sleeping boy's heart were responding as well, the illusion would have continued to flow over the room until it reflected his memories of that day in the Keyblade Graveyard.

 

Or so Vanitas had hoped.

 

He closed his eyes in his failure.

 

He let the tension out of his posture, and was returned to only an empty white room, as the castle relaxed its hold upon him.

 

Vanitas lowered the false Void Gear and allowed it to dissipate with an empty, beleaguered, sigh.

 

“An 'unbreakable connection,' huh? Do you really think that makes _you_ any different from us?”

 

He considered Aqua, with nine years of hindsight to his advantage.

 

“Just _admit it_ ,” he said in a short breath. It was almost a laugh. “You like him more this way, stuck in his chair. When he only moves how you want him to move. When he's helpless until you want to help him. It must be so much _easier_ to love him, when his whining mouth doesn't get in the way.

 

“Admit it. You would put them right next to him, if you thought you could get away with it. If you could keep _every last one of them—_ all your precious _connections_ —labeled in a jar, on a _shelf..._ where you could keep them right where you want them, _forever_ , where you would never lose track of them again, _you would do it_. Admit it. Forever, until the worlds die, always where you want them, _admit it._ Admit it.”

 

A decade of nothing. Of unrelenting, miserable, silence. Waiting.

 

“Fine.”

 

It had been for nothing.

 

“ _Fine._ This is what I get for trying to save you some trouble.” He slid his foot forward, as though to nudge her, not saying a word as his ghost passed through her without any effect.

 

He considered, one more time, just waking Aqua regardless of the risks.

 

“I don't have a body to join with you, and I suppose if I did, we wouldn't need to be here. _You_ don't have nearly enough despair in your heart to be influenced by what's hiding there. We wouldn't be able to make you do anything, as you are now. And if I just wait until he could, until your heart is finally broken... you'd only trap us both in your own illusions. And that wouldn't be any good to either of us.”

 

And from what little he knew of the castle's defenses, notwithstanding any changes Aqua may have made herself, it could be temperamental about ownership. Who knew what would happen should any fate befall her heart that might prevent the castle from recognizing her heart?

 

“This isn't going to work. Send her back to Neverland.” he inclined his head to the boy that would one day become Master Xehanort, still posturing behind him. “We'll just have to do what Xehanort wants.”

 

He looked down at Aqua, still out, her sleeping thoughts exhausted and wandering. And for a moment, without all of the noise in-between them, he felt just as tired.

 

“What a shame.”

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

 

**2.**

 

Aqua was a flickering blue shadow, alone in the gray sand. She sat staring at the dim light hanging over the sea. She had been slouched, arms folded over her knees, shoulders held low, for longer than she could remember. She may have been waiting on that beach entire lifetimes, for a reunion that would never come.

 

One lifetime each for everyone that was living on without her, growing old without her, dying without her, while she was left alone in the dark. A feeling of longing remained through it all, urging her to abandon that miserable desire and claim another instead. It pressed her to give up everything else, and reach out until she could touch that faint light once again, to see it up close just one more time.

 

That constant longing had yet to consume her. Not completely, at least. She could still turn away from the shore and the distant light if she wanted to. Or so she thought. She hadn't tested it. She was far enough in the dark as it was, and had no desire to sink herself even further into shadow. But she didn't think she was that far gone, regardless, no matter how powerful a need was drumming within the walls of her heart.

 

It was as she continued to glare at the light, on and on, and alone in the darkness, that still another feeling—one far more demanding—wrapped tightly around her, threatening to squeeze her heart through her skin as it strangled her thoughts. That was how she knew he was still herself. It wasn't a longing for light that ground her jaw, shortened her breath until it was sharp and heavy, or had clenched her hand tight until steel and glass had bit into her palm for so long that their sting was forgotten.

 

The shore was dotted with angry outcroppings of mountainous, sharply angled, boulders. Tall arching spirals of subtly glowing rock erupted from the gritty sand, and stretched in crooked bends from the base of the land, to as far out in the water as a grown woman could stand. The echoing of the rocks as new waves swept around them was not wholly unpleasant—a rarity in the dark world. The steady crashing seemed timed to the rhythm of the dying light, which was always flickering off the damp crags. The rocks were veined in washed-out silver, reflecting the scarce illumination that still leaked into the realm.

 

The difference between tides was like those of her birth world, always very slight in the absence of a moon. Even so, it was still more than enough for the rising water to reach her, if she waited long enough. And so far, she always had.

 

It could seem almost peaceful, waiting there at the end of the sea, watching the water creep slowly closer.

 

There was danger in that, one she had not seen at the start.

 

When she first arrived, there was a moment when she could lie to herself, and choose to believe the margin between realms to be a place of genuine rest. There was a moment when the lie even approached reality, at first. But that was before she was alone. Now, that bare ribbon of coastline could no longer serve as sanctuary to her. The calm was this realm's greatest lie. The waves whispered as relentlessly as the wind and the scratching sand.

 

She knew she should get out. There was still time, to leave and walk away, and wander the endless wastes once more.

 

But even though sitting there in despair and loathing did her no good, it was still the only place she knew that was safe from constant attack. She was too spent to walk for decades more, through the darkness, with no destination in mind.

 

And this time there would be worse things than heartless to haunt her steps.

 

The light itself looked less like a sun than it did a gray hole that had been thinned into the realm. It was an absence, a faint slice of the outer worlds, scantly illuminating the shroud covering it. When she paid attention to the clouds of the fake sky of the realm of darkness, how they only wrapped around and trapped the light, she always drifted towards the past. Trying to recall what a real afternoon sun looked like.

 

If she focused long enough, she could almost remember one. Only, the harder she held on to those brief, infrequent, moments of clarity, the more the memories she couldn't hold on to would draw further and farther away.

 

It had been important to her once, her first night beneath the stars, high up in the mountains. Seeing a cloudless night for the first time, with her friends. It had grown blurry with time. Aqua's nostalgic longing had slowly morphed into an impossible image, of her friends together with her, outside and looking up at... Not for the first time she almost looked back to greet them, in the darkness... as she recalled why it couldn't be real.

 

She could even hear the smiles in their half-remembered voices as they called her name. She wouldn't have been able to, if they were really with her.

 

If they were happy, they must have been anywhere but together; and if they weren't, then what had been the point of it all?

 

Like so many of her once precious memories, that thought—that they were at peace, that they were _gone_ , and always without her—had made it easier to hold onto herself a little less tightly. To let go. To let dreams—of seeing the sun, or the stars, or white clouds with her friends just one more time—slip away before she could dwell on them too long.

 

Fading slowly was the only way to endure the dark.

 

It was the only way to avoid being stretched apart until she tore.

 

And disappearing was easier when it happened too slow to stop.

 

Aqua listened to a wave breaking just before her feet. As it pulled away, the wet sand was only a very fine layer of grit, brushed over the smooth rock beneath. She rolled her foot on its low heel, drawing a line in the sand. She could feel every soggy grain, like the ground itself was her skin. When she pressed down her sole, she could feel more of the dark realm wringing out of the sand, and seeping into the cracks it had already weathered in her being.

 

Another wave broke, this time far enough up shore that the leading crest of foam could just pass her heels.

 

The gray bubbles passed through her pointed feet, soaking deep into the shadow remaining of her boots. A writhing fog of ink rose from her foot, pushed out of her, to make room for the dark realm to occupy its space.

 

She would _never_ leave this place.

 

The realm of light didn't want her back.

 

And even if it did, where would she go, that would be far enough? It was all a part of her now. The water, the air, and even the ground itself. Flowing through her and back again. Darkness had become like a breath, like the waves.

 

She'd had companions once, to speak to her, to keep her from her solitude. Now that they were gone, she had only the sound of the sea and the sands. She didn't know anymore where her own shadow ended, and those of the dark realm began.

 

Even if she left, she would carry too much of it with her to ever really be gone.

 

In the time she spent watching, she had found the sea level to change only slightly, but predictably. It was a difference hardly more than her ankle's height, but enough to notice even without touch to guide her. She once tried to keep track of it, even knowing that time only existed for her alone.

 

It had just been something to do, a way of trying to enforce some degree of control upon her surroundings, while she waited and waited and waited for her heart to finally grow weary and snuff itself out. When the waiting was over, at least she would have known exactly how long she'd been left alone and forgotten.

 

Two cycles should have made a day, in the realm of light. So she counted the tide in dozens of pairs, at first, marking how many days it had been since someone had sat there with her, along that same shore. Before long she'd been working her way into the hundreds, into the thousands. It must have been thousands of days, she'd once guessed, since she'd been abandoned by the worlds of light and left to die.

 

She had eventually lost track of what she was doing, amid the tedium, and if she was determined not to let time escape her again, it could still stretch and grow unwieldy. When she remembered what she was doing, she'd reached twenty-thousand. And then she stopped counting.

 

It hadn't been helping, anyway.

 

Nothing ever helped.

 

Stupid.

 

Why had she thought that would work?

 

She should have known it wouldn't. For all it _felt_ like she'd been alone for years and years, it didn't seem right. It was never that simple. Even if it were true, the dark realm would never let her _know_ that.

 

Even abandoned and discarded, it was possible word might eventually reach her from the outside. Otherwise, Aqua would never know just how long she had walked, fought, and bled after she sent Mickey on without her, until she was finally drawn to the place by the sea.

 

Her constant battles across the dark world's shifting landscape could have fit into less time than what had passed, before they met in the darkness.

 

It could have been far longer, before the first time Terra's voice had begun reaching down from the clouds to haunt her.

 

And it could have been days or decades more, before his cloaked shade had first appeared to her in person.

 

There was no way to tell.

 

The realm of darkness had no definite shape or border—save for maybe the beach at its very end. But in terms of breadth, of composition, of time itself, it took from what it could strip away from the minds and hearts of those within it. And, for most of her time here, that had meant it came from Aqua's mind alone. From her memories, stolen out of her heart and given broken form.

 

Trying to keep track of time, to force structure upon the formless world, was never a good idea.

 

It was better to just endure it as it was.

 

Aqua had known she should have learned— _had_ learned, until she'd forgotten it again—that lesson in her endless walking. Awareness of how futile it all was had always seemed to plod farther away from her, the longer she tried to keep track of where she was going. It wasn't so much that she'd find herself turned around, but that the dark world itself had turned wrong.

 

Rock arches had moved, roads borrowed from fallen worlds twisted and sloped, and mountains cratered into low depressions as she walked past. The realm itself had conspired against her in that way, to keep her forever moving through unfamiliar ground. Even without a destination, the end of her journey had always been forever out of reach. Nothing she had done, none of her supposed progress, had ever changed that.

 

The sound the waves made as they echoed off the rocks was still right, at least. She was still sure of that much. No matter how long she sat, no matter how far she was from home, at least the waves never left her. She could ignore the whispers of the darkness cradling her heart beneath their skin, to focus only on the sound and movement of the water, and that at least would be _right_. She could start from there, and work her way back to herself one more time.

 

There were other moments though, times of greatest despair where she could almost bring herself to let the heaviest shadows fall across her face, over her hollow eyes, and make herself believe everything else was right as well. She would forget this place, forget everyone that had left her behind, and let herself go. She could go to sleep and then, finally, she would be somewhere else.

 

Her lingering memories would take hold of her heart, until she'd feel a sharp wind dusting her with salt and sand, until she could feel her hair scratching her eyes, and her skirts and sleeves breeze against her skin until it itched. She could sleep certain that the sun would shine again in the day above her, waiting for her to wake up with a creak in her neck, and her arm asleep from falling on her side wrong, and without her heart always shuddering at the bottom of her throat.

 

Sleep was always tempting, except, she knew that if she ever shut her eyes again, for even a moment, she would never open them back up. There wasn't anyone left to wake her again. There was no one who would know.

 

There was no one who cared.

 

It might not even be such a bad end, but that was a choice she could only make once. It was better to save it for when she really wanted to claim it. That was what Aqua had been telling herself since she was first cast aside, and she wasn't there, at her end—not yet. She didn't really know what was holding her back. Or if there was anything that was. Maybe it was just the absence of anything to pitch her forward.

 

The dark realm's light was distant despite it's apparent size. Far beyond that thin cut in the sky was the same source that lit every world in the realms between, from Twilight Town to Traverse Town. It reached even there along the thin margin of shore separating the realm of darkness from the sea beyond. Light was spread out over such a distance that there was no comfort or warmth left by the time it breached the dark world. What there was almost seemed like a mocking impersonation.

 

That was why the wan light had nothing to offer someone that the worlds had forgotten. Throughout the meandering path Aqua had taken, her surroundings were only bright enough to let her see the shadows as they circled her, all while her own would not so much as stir. She had been lucky to even stumble upon the shore, hidden away as it was beyond the high hills and spires.

 

Loud as the waves were, echoing off those rocks, those natural walls made it impossible to hear the shore until she was right upon it. She had been fortunate to feel the brief pull of a warmth that didn't belong. She couldn't see it, and it had chilled almost before she'd noticed it, but she had followed it all the same.

 

As for that pale light in the sky, she simply found it, once, at the end of her long journey. The sky was empty and then, after a few more steps, it wasn't any longer. Even close to shore, it was too dim to really pursue, too low in the sky to even make a signpost. She hadn't seen it until she was right in front of it, on the other side of the hills surrounding the margin. Looking back at that time, it made her feel as though the sun itself had forgotten her.

 

Maybe she just knew better than to accept that.

 

She knew she deserved more than that. She knew, even if it was hard to remember why. It hard been hard to remember even before she came to that horrible place.

 

Aqua looked down at her wayfinder.

 

Her glass heart; her blue star.

 

Its reflection still lit her eyes within her empty silhouette, rendered them still bright as the true sky. It seemed dimmer when clasped in her shadowed hand, and the cold mist rising from her palm easily found its way through the web of cracks running through two of the charm's five pointed arms. But even faded and breaking, it made for a better guiding light than anything in the dark world's muted sky. It was still enough to keep her heart warm, awake and waiting, no matter how often she gave up on her watch ending.

 

The only way she had to mark the passage of time lay in the befores and in the afters of her journey. After she fell. Before she met Mickey again. After the worlds were returned to the realm of light, leaving her behind. Before she reached this shore: the end of the sea between.

 

Aqua had walked for so long, shedding so much of herself as she went. And then one moment—one 'day,' in an endless, ageless, string of movements... One moment, one day, one second, she had felt another light mirrored in the distance. In that maybe-a-second, something in the air had changed, something had been stirred within her heart, and Aqua had followed it to where it wanted her to go.

 

Time almost seemed real again as she moved, guided on by her heart's pull.

 

She had found her way through the high rocks just in time for the adrenaline of struggle and exhaustion to be replaced by that of disappointment, of having salvation torn away from her once again. And even though time had abandoned her once more, she could still follow the pull that didn't belong. It was already gone long before she had arrived, but she could still feel it across the distant gulf, drawing her forward. The impression it left was so great that her wayfinder had shone like the lost light, reflecting it in full even in its absence.

 

She had seen that same light flicker in her hand once again, seemingly not long ago.

 

Its source was distant, resting far beyond the other side of the sea, near the realm of light itself. And it felt as strong and as warm as ever. It belonged to Mickey's friend, she had learned, when she first came upon the waves. Sora, the boy who saved the worlds. Sora, the boy she nearly chose.

 

She still felt her disappointment in only just missing him, etched into the glass of her heart.

 

She could have been there for him, when destiny had chosen him, had her own been different. There was still the tug of an obligation there, knowing that fate had chosen to act upon him, even while she had refused it.

 

Yet she saw there was already something else watching over him. A green light in the sky, shining down, brightening his path just a little more. Once it had been hidden to her, but now she could see it, even dim and distant as it was from her vantage point. There were rare stars that shone even in the dark world, so long as you knew to look for them. She should have taken comfort in that. But...

 

She knew all-too-well where to find the shadow that the green star left on the sky. She could even gaze through her wayfinder, and see it as it would have looked in the realm of light. She could picture it as it smiled down at Sora alone, shining its light.

 

The light of that green star would surely have been bright enough to guide her home too, if only it would have tried. How could he have been awake this entire time, and never even try?

 

“Don't you see me?” Aqua had wondered of Ven, each time.

 

“Can't you hear me?” Aqua asked, each time her friend failed to appear to her. The boy had never shown himself again, in person. Not after the first time.

 

“Why won't you say anything?” Why hadn't he ever spoken to her with his heart, like Terra once had?

 

“You really don't care, do you?” Aqua had asked, once, and felt a surge that felt faintly like shame. Why was that it? Shouldn't _they_ be the ones to feel shame, knowing that she was only there because of she had loved them? If she had not fought so hard for them, if she hadn't given them so much when they held out so little hope for her...

 

“Were you ever really my friend?” Aqua asked of it, voice chipped and miserable. Why else wouldn't he try? Even Terra and Mickey had tried, before they gave up on her. How could Ven not do that much? She felt discarded, and she couldn't find an answer that satisfied her, that left her with anything more.

 

Deep within her cracked heart, the voice of her misery whispered to her, when no one else would.

 

“ _No one can save you.”_

 

“No one wants to.”

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

 

 

**3.**

 

“Ansem.”

 

He dragged the name out, sound by sound. It came as a hoarse rumbling from his chest, as though he were massaging his memory, loosening the knots that his mind had once tied around his heart.

 

Aqua's friend had struggled as such, more often than not, throughout the uncountable time in which she'd known him.

 

The darkness tried endlessly to confuse them. Even having succeeded in her long passage through the dark world, Aqua still found herself in constant danger of chasing nothings down a myriad of stray paths. It was in that way the that the lingering absence, of everything she had lost, tried to crush her beneath its weight.

 

Her new friend seemed prone to that same affliction and more.

 

He had proven frequently forgetful, and it wasn't merely details of color and sound which escaped him. His mind continued resisting the slow return of his memory.

 

Aqua as well had endured too much of herself slipping away, but thankfully little of what had truly mattered to who she once was. She remembered who she had been on the worst of her days, and remembered who she wished to be on her best. There was a mirror in her heart that carried her name, and even after so long lost to the dark, she could still see her reflection well enough.

 

That was why no matter how much she suffered, she had to remember that, in a ways, she was still more fortunate than she might have been.

 

She was still a Keyblade master.

 

She was still successor to Castle Oblivion.

 

She still had her wayfinder; could still see the stars; still had her friends to guide her home.

 

Things could have been so much worse.

 

So she had accepted it as her latest burden, to remind her new friend of the very details he had confided in her, before they should fade away again. And there was something else beneath the rest, a grogginess that seemed to suggest a bone weary exhaustion. It was like he had been half-asleep and half-in-his-grave, even before he arrived, only waking up in time for the dark world to begin its work against him. Whatever it was, it would never get better, no matter how much of himself Ansem was able to reclaim.

 

Aqua could only sympathize. She had come to know well that neither wounds of the body, nor strain of the mind and heart, could ever heal. Not for so long as one was trapped down there, lost to the light.

 

The realm of darkness wasn't entirely a world frozen in time, so much as one where it didn't properly exist at all. Unlike those who inhabited the sleeping worlds, where time was truly still, the heart lost in the dark continued to exist in its waking state. Those who found themselves trapped within the dark world were left free to wander, and in doing so there could be a forward movement to events that made it not so different from the worlds of light and balance.

 

It was only the body—flesh and everything it housed—that was trapped frozen, in the torment of perpetual stasis.

 

Even by the outset of her duel in the courtyards of Radiant Garden, Aqua had been worn down pursuing her quarry restlessly since she'd pulled Ven, wounded, from the wreckage of the Keyblade Graveyard. By it's end, she had been fighting for Terra's life throughout the longest night of her own. Now, even the most subtle of healing could only restore her to the state she had arrived in: exactly as she was when first lost to the dark realm, starved and tired and already breaking.

 

She still carried all of those unhealed wounds. She could feel them as plainly as when she'd first taken stock of herself, and of what that battle had cost her. And she could still feel the soreness of the hundred littler hurts and pains she'd picked up along the way.

 

Exhaustion had made her sloppy, until she felt the shock of the next blow, making her quick again. Stunned to attention, but never for long. She had always been faster than Terra—and quicker on her feet—but whether it was her own tiredness, or the strength the darkness had given his limbs, that had been one fight where she had received as bad as she'd given. And in the end had come the worst of it, as she dove into her friend's heart, even as she succeeded beyond wildest hope. She'd feared Terra was gone, had begun the chase believing it already too late, but found him only asleep within the deep darkness. She hadn't known what it meant at the time, and had been too relieved to wonder at the sudden turn.

 

After all, a beast out of a girlhood nightmare had erupted from the darkness permeating his body. The air around her had gone cold beneath her skin. Her mistake had been there, she realized later. She'd taken the monster to be controlling him, but she hadn't understood it for what it was. She had never seen Xehanort's Keyblade before, had not recognized it nor the change within Terra's heart for what it was. She had thought only that she was contending with her friend's own anger and torment, surging unrestrained from his overwhelmed heart. Just like she had feared, just how their Master had taught them to fear. She allowed herself to look no further, to focus only on how she could help him break free of it.

 

Stretched. That was how she came to feel, in the final seconds before their light had jointly surged, and struck the darkness from his heart. The connection between herself and Terra had been tested, thinned and pulled taut, but remained still unbroken. And afterward, she felt her own light ripping through her, as if splintering what had already been fractured by the χ-blade weeks earlier. There were new cracks left in her heart, and there could have been steam thundering out from them as she shuddered.

 

When it was over, there had been no opportunity to rest, to slow her breathing, or calm the screaming of her blood, before the next disaster had unveiled itself. And so she'd been delivered into the darkness drained, hungry, and exhausted; and even now the feeling of slow starvation, of her heavy eyes pleading for rest or death, had never eased.

 

She felt stretched.

 

Wound so far beyond what her training had proven to be her limit.

 

Years of practice had taught her she could endure as much as anyone, but years in the dark world had shown her there was nothing to endure. Moving through pain was one thing, and so was working through incapacity. But there was nothing for it, when the last shocks had never faded.

 

Aqua's heart still raced through her ears with all the anxiety and desperation that followed the hollowest victories. She'd learned only to accept it as a chronic pain of her life, the still fresh anxiety of drowning in dry air.

 

She knew there was nothing actually happening to her: she was only sitting there, talking with her new friend. Yet still Aqua's nerves singed, her blood throbbed beneath her skin as it choked at her heart, and instinct cried out over and over to stab and hack, to burn, to shield herself until everything went away save for the sound of stillness and the waves.

 

And always that anxiety remained within, intense, never diminishing.

 

Aqua had learned all too well that the only way she would ever be free of it, was to become free.

 

What must it have been like to fall, worse off than she had, already so weak and confused? She could only imagine. Had imagined. Whenever she found herself wondering what the point was—of still going on, of lifting her Keyblade once more to fight again and again—that was the thought she'd fallen back to.

 

What would have happened if her resolve had faltered? If fear and concern had led her to hold back?

 

What would have happened to her, if she'd been lost already too broken to fight?

 

And who, then, would be left to help Ven wake back up?

 

“My name was Ansem,” her new friend said, again, with the hint of uncertainty grown fainter.

 

The blue star in Aqua's palm grew palpably warmer even through her glove. The light reminded her where she was, and pulled her back to herself as surely as the sudden change bid her hand to squeeze closed.

 

Her fingers cut against the blunt, rounded, steel just enough to sting.

 

At work was the lingering of another old hurt. She couldn't remember on which world it had transpired, only that it must have been near the end to still trouble her so. She had channeled too much lightning through her Keyblade, one time too many. The backlash had caught her, when she hadn't had time to bleed the charge away and into the air. Enough had crackled and burned across the surface of her Keyblade, to leave her arm with occasional tremors. Without having had time to work through them correctly, the joints below the elbow still locked up at the worst times.

 

“I'm pleased to meet you, Ansem,” Aqua said.

 

She had to keep her voice steady, as low as she could manage while still being heard.

 

She'd had plenty of practice talking to herself in the dark but, even so, she needed to be careful or exhaustion would burn her lungs like fire.

 

She hoped that affection at least made her seem more confident than she felt.

 

For as long as they had sat with one another, she had been counseling him, trying to guide Ansem back to his self. It made her feel like a journeyman again, wandering the between worlds whenever she wasn't preparing for her mastery. She remembered, fondly enough, helping wounded hearts find peace.

 

There were differences, of course, and she found herself unexpectedly grateful to have inherited not only her Master's teachings, but his Keyblade as well. With its mastery over the heart's illusions, she could loosen the chains shackling his memories and let splinters of the past drift to the surface. It was long work, teasing one fragment from his heart at a time, and then keeping careful hold on each link, lest it slip his heart and stray further away.

 

It was a constant struggle against the nature of the dark world and, in some ways, of the heart itself; but after so many years of fighting alone against the tireless and unrelenting shadows, she found that struggle to be its own relief. No matter how difficult a contest it was, there was something liberating in having a goal she could touch again, of having a plain end in sight.

 

Master Keeper's power remained a dangerous one to command, where the darkness could so easily whisper its poison to her—as she'd learned, once before, cornered by her own phantom—but the risk was far less dire than what diving into his heart would have represented. And Aqua still had the advantage of her own skills to supplement her sad inheritance.

 

Her own lost Keyblade, Rainfell, had formed easy bonds between hearts. The wayfinder she forged from its blue steel and cold glass could find the hearts connected to her's again, over any distance, across any darkness. It would always guide them back to her, and her to them.

 

She had nearly lost herself once already, trapped so long in the dark world. She promised herself she never would again. So long as there was someone who needed her, she would always be a light in the darkness. She drew what resolve she could from that vow.

 

As they spoke, she was able to slowly build up a picture of his heart, mapping it with her star. As the connection between them wore in, Aqua grew a sense for the direction of his memories, and for provoking the feelings bound to them. The bonds she formed danced as always between water and ice, easing feelings to the surface of the heart in a string of bubbles, before freezing them safe.

 

Weaving such bonds was true power of her own Keyblade, and the fullest expression of the nature of her heart itself. Its flickering was both a light she aimed consciously, and one that was prone to act upon it's own, on a level beneath the instinctive. In the end, the light of Aqua's star would always shine itself upon whatever purpose her heart thought was right.

 

Aqua had spoken at length with Ansem, many times, between the long silences, as they took the time he needed to sort one event from another and struggle to piece them back into place. It had given her the opportunity to hear many of his impressions, as they slowly reclaimed them. In part the experience helped her as well, allowing her to better to hold on to her own past—or at least those images which were the most important to her—as she struggled against the loss of his.

 

They helped each other, rather. The thought made her feel selfish, more than once. She could make it well enough on her own, she didn't need to drag someone else down over her problems. But guarding her own memories did seem to aid her in straining out more of his, until in that last moment, he'd finally recovered the most important of them all.

 

Along the way Ansem had been able to fix the memories of his six wayward apprentices to his mind, as he told her of their crimes against the those two children, Sora and Riku, and along the way remembered his own. And hadn't that given her a start? To think of Ansem's crimes, they certainly had the sound of something Xehanort would have a hand in.

 

And it was impossible to mistake that black coat he wore for anything else. It was of the same design Terra's body had worn, the same that had once been lain tauntingly at her feat. Aqua didn't sense anything in him that hinted he might be one of theirs. But all the same, she had known it had become more important than ever—more than only to herself—to find a way out of the dark world.

 

She was scared for all of them, whenever she recalled her own encounters with Terra's shade. Ansem wasn't aware of everything that had happened, but from the sound of it, they'd at least survived, and time had been on their side in a way it wasn't on her own. Yet she still worried, to think of Terra and Xehanort and everything either or both of them may have done in her absence. The things they may have said.

 

“You have been among our greatest supporters, friend,” Terra's voice whispered, once, in the darkness. “We could never have come so far without your assistance. Why not, simply, accept that truth?”

 

Ansem had spoken of the the loss of Radiant Garden as well, lost to the heartless, all save for the mysterious case of Kairi. _There_ was yet another obligation. She had been so worried over her friends back then, she hadn't realized at the time, what she must have inflicted upon that innocent girl just through being close to her. Aqua's duty truly was a burdensome one, ready to weigh down everyone around her, if she lowered her guard enough to let it.

 

It was strange how she found herself always stumbling upon new reasons to shamble on, in such unexpected places.

 

Much of what she had listened to was depressing in its familiarity. There were too many tales of three Key bearing children, uncannily familiar to another three she'd known, and of worlds she'd walked or visited from afar. Everything sounded just as she'd expect, disasters and conflicts shaped people she'd once met, and still others she could have just as well replaced, whose roles she could have stepped into and felt as nothing had ever changed.

 

She wasn't the only one who could take another's role, it seemed. Along the way, Ansem had relayed to her the betrayal he'd suffered at the hands of the young man named Xehanort.

 

(Terra).

 

Meeting the man in the black coat again, the first time he'd drawn down his hood, seeing Terra's face, aged and weathered, had taken her back too far. It had been the first time it struck her, how much time she had lost. As he spoke to her, his tone was flat. Unsettlingly level, with no emotion conveyed. Changed by time as much as his form. The incongruity kept her from processing what he was saying at first, beyond the surface level. Beneath, her mind had been left to wander it's own tangled path.

 

They had encountered one another more than once unto that point, but to her shame she could only place the voice in retrospect. She had been unable to sense a heart within him, had taken him for a likely foe, but finally she'd seen his face. She hadn't known at first if that had been Terra, or a Terra bound by Xehanort, or someone else entirely. Or was it only Xehanort, and Xehanort alone, tormenting her anew? And whoever he was, he had reached out to her, even if it was hidden well beneath the half-truths and malice.

 

Was there anything left of him? She _still_ didn't know, and that haunted her. Had she failed again? Or had Terra won, but lost at the same time? She had seen him fighting back against Xehanort, when the light had dimmed from her eyes, and the shadows grasped for her heart. Had Terra bested him, as she was carried away, only to somehow but lose his heart? Was he still in there, or had someone new been born in the wreckage?

 

And even if there was nothing left but the empty shell, wasn't she responsible for him all the same? Whether he was an old friend, forever changed; or someone new entirely, that she could still find something familiar in—didn't he still need her help? She might never know, at least not until she found a way home, just who it was she would have be helping. But either way, if she couldn't bring herself to fight for her best friend now, what had she ever fought for in the first place?

 

She had been too frantic to make note of anything at the time, but her ribs had been cracked escaping a mistake she'd made in Radiant Garden, and it left her breathing still faintly wet around both sides. Whenever there was nothing to distract her from that sharp ache, she could still see the enormous shadowed hand of Xehanort's monster as it emerged from the haze of darkness that had suffused Terra's body. It had surged past the opening an unfortunate clash of their Keyblades had left, and reached down to seize her. The sharp ache in her ribs was such a stark reminder, leaving her always alert, waiting for that hand to reach in from out of her field of view.

 

Aqua had listened to him carefully—Terra, “Xemnas,” or whoever else he really was—giving nothing up if she could help it, while she half-waited for the shadows to crush her again. He seemed to take something from her forced stoicism, as best as she could gauge, read it as allowance more freely. So much of her confidence, what she'd thought her courage, had been reduced to bluff. It was left a product of so much pain and exhaustion that she couldn't do anything else, but keep going or die.

 

Whoever he had become, he was aligned with Xehanort, plainly enough. As he'd spoken, he'd twisted the past into knots, re-framing her as an ally as well. He wanted her to believe that no matter what aid or comfort she'd attempt to give the light from within the realm of darkness, she had already done more in the service of their cause than any other.

 

“What have you done, truly, in your attempts to thwart us?” the unknown man had asked. “You defeated Vanitas, and aided the king in closing the door. In doing so, you have successfully thwarted two of our plans to bring forth Kingdom Hearts, but others yet remain. You have merely reminded us of the need for patience, by revealing the flaws in our lesser attempts—as any good ally would.

 

“Consider the worlds you have labored to restore. Such faint, flickering, lights they have become. Still half in shadow, easy pray to the heartless, ready to tip and fall at a moment's notice. What else could the guardians of light do, but defend them? And with each heart they release, they make my Kingdom Hearts one step closer to reality. The worlds you have restored, in the end, have only provided my Keybearers with more heartless to fell. Do you not see, how you still serve the darkness? Just as you did by saving me.”

 

“That's not true!” she had said. “What I did, it wasn't even a choice. You were my friend. I had to save you. I couldn't have done anything else and still be _me_.”

 

“Indeed, it is so. I am... relieved, in a fashion, that you see truly. You behaved exactly as your heart, dictated you behave. Now here you are. Is that not, my old friend, the clearest sign that you belong to us?”

 

In the end it was the name, as it often was, which proved the missing puzzle piece her new friend needed. It all started to come back together, after that, as the portrait of who Ansem was knit itself back together. One memory at a time, the chain so easy to follow from one feeling to the next. Quickly or slowly, she couldn't be sure. Time seemed to move again for both of them, and for once she knew that what she felt was real, and no trick of her surroundings. But after so long, she couldn't say how fast it sped.

 

Aqua herself had once spent, what felt like, an entire lifetime wandering the endless gray desert. Terra's changed voice had haunted her from the shadows, all the way, pushing her to accept defeat, to bow to his reality. She had been left with no choice but to keep walking, all the while having to contend with the strain of her last trial in the realm of light.

 

Not long before she fell, she'd been forced to call upon the magic of time splicing, to escape Xehanort's monster. The dangerous spell had granted her exhausted body the alacrity to slip and wave around its grasping hands. The cost was one she had never thought too much of paying, but it had left her more frayed than ever, and the bone-deep numbness had caught up to her more than once throughout the endless walking.

 

She was always ready to fall, and always barely holding herself up, to keep moving just enough so she could stay upright.

 

How long had it been, since Terra urged her not to fall for the tricks of the dark world, before she'd met him again, silver haired and in a black coat, playing his own tricks? The pauses between must have been their own years, but the numbness of each step had felt like its own eternity.

 

She still felt sore and aching, sitting along the water. It made the wait feel as only moments in comparison, but her heart told her she had already grown to know this Ansem like an old companion. She wanted to think that was more than just her flagging hopes getting up on her.

 

She wanted to feel like she had accomplished something.

 

Aqua had wandered aimlessly after Mickey alerted her to the danger the worlds faced. She had been left feeling as though she'd lost yet another life, and at the end of more than one journey. Along the way, she had tried to make it back home again and again, even as she'd tried to be a light for those still trapped in the darkness.

 

And at every end, she had always seemed to be so close, but too late all the same.

 

There were once many worlds trapped in the darkness with her, and though they appeared empty, Aqua knew their inhabitants were only waiting for a chance to be reborn from their long sleep. She sought out the dark halves of those worlds, one by one, and locked their Keyholes. In doing so, she gave them the opportunity to return, as long as Mickey and his friends had already saved the other side.

 

They had.

 

She had thought that might mean it was time for her to be saved as well.

 

Aqua had made an early, unsuccessful, attempt at riding the Castle of Dreams back to the realm of light, but as with the islands, it only ascended without her. That was okay, she'd told herself. She was the only light down in the darkness, and there had been too many other worlds waiting for escape, holding on as they waited for someone to guide them back. And there were hardly any volunteers to carry on after her.

 

She had already missed one chance to save herself, when she'd been forced to send Mickey on without her. She could handle missing a few more. And there had been others, in those long moments since, fighting through hordes of heartless to the broken remnants of one world after another. And there would be still more to come. She didn't try to take those chances again, as they came to her, as she made her way between one dark side after another. She had known she couldn't, not then, not until the last one, not until she was sure no one else would ever be left behind.

 

So she had watched the land break away without her, one world at a time, and tried to ignore the stabbing pain in her heart, even as it warned her she was breaking away with them.

 

Just as the men in the black coats had warned her would happen.

 

She had kept going until the end, when she'd stood before Terra's—Xehanort's? With what Ansem had told her of Nobodies, what Terra himself had admitted, how could she really know?—artificial Kingdom Hearts, when she'd done the only thing she could do, and locked its dark half as well.

 

Aqua had seen it as a great light in the distance. She couldn't imagine what it was like seeing its reflection in the realm of light, but down in the darkness, it had been a beacon drawing her—and the heartless—into the deepest depths.

 

As a heartless was a shroud of darkness encasing a tormented heart, so too was the dark world itself for fragmented heart of all other worlds. When Terra gathered the light of all those who fell to torment and despair during the fall of the worlds of light, it must have created a counterpart, just as had been done through Xehanort plunging the worlds into darkness.

 

She had wondered at the moment if that was why destiny had chosen her to stay behind.

 

The heartless seemed to rise toward the light easily enough, and it was only remembering there was no one else that stopped her from joining them.

 

One final task, she had realized, that could only be completed with a key on either side. Standing so close to the edge of the world, she'd felt four guardian lights ready and waiting on the other side. They were so close that she knew they were there, even without feeling their light mirrored in her wayfinder. She'd already decided she would do her duty to the worlds first. If there was time, she would try to follow behind later.

 

Aqua had raised her Keyblade to the sky, when she felt the time was right. There hadn't been much else to do. It was over soon after. Terra's moon had dispersed into a sprawling conflagration of crackling stars, and when the madness had finally died down, she'd felt truly left alone in the dark for the first time.

 

For though she had gone so long without companionship, at least she'd had the worlds to keep her company.

 

She couldn't feel proud of what she'd done, in secret and silence, like she had known she should have. Not anymore than she could for the worlds she had locked away, helped free from the darkness. Or for her choice to stay behind to help Mickey and Riku. Or to fall and be forgotten, so that Terra wouldn't have to.

 

She'd done what her heart had told her was right.

 

A Keyblade Master shouldn't have needed anything else.

 

The thought only left her hollow.

 

After that, had come eternity after empty eternity. There had been no more encounters with the men in black coats, no more lost worlds to guide back to the light. The landscape of the dark world was no more bleak than it had always been, but without those odd breaks in scenery, it was hard not to wonder if the last chance at freedom had been snatched away from her.

 

She had started giving up on the hope of ever having another, as she had so many times already, before she'd felt that one last burst of light. And then, whether it was years later, or only seconds, she found her way to the last shore.

 

And so, as Ansem pieced his heart back together, Aqua felt that same faded hope welling up inside of her once again. It started out so tentatively it was easy to put out of mind, to focus on what was right in front of her: someone who still needed her help. It was such a tiny flicker, she could still pretend its absence, that she wasn't looking for it all over again. But before long, the anxious fear of disappointment started to thaw, and her wayfinder began to emit warmer light.

 

The heat that passed through her star in that moment was familiar, and it connected Aqua and Ansem to one another, and to the comforting light's distant source. Even as they remained separated by the wide gulf stretching out before her, Aqua could feel that radiant heart as though there were a hand pressing against her's, with only a sheet of glass to separate them. As it drew warmer, those memories she had of it, those feelings that reminded her of that friendship, all at once drew forward to meet it, to stretch out across realms like a bridge between.

 

“...Mickey?” Aqua asked her heart, asked the light in her star, afraid to hope for an answer. Could _he_ finally see her too? Why else would she feel so clearly—

 

_I found a warm, familiar light. I followed it to find my way... to you._ She had remembered happiness, in that moment. She'd been too lightheaded to even let it show. Just a shift across her face, and she had to snap it back before she broke. That hadn't been the first time she'd been confronted with the realization she had forgotten how to smile.

 

Remembering how, that was her proof that someone still cared about her—not just one friend, but the other people connected to her heart. It was proof to hold on to, proof they were still with her.

 

_If both you and me believe in him with all our hearts...then he'll have two lights to follow instead of one._ Relief—that was what she'd felt. Ven's heart was sleeping, and Terra's had been lost, but maybe she didn't have to be in it alone anymore.

 

It was a reminder that although her friends were gone, she would find them again. It was a promise to herself, that she'd survive, she'd go home, and she could still find help along the way.

 

_Gosh, I'm glad you're okay._ She'd been exhausted, then as now, when he woke her up in the Keyblade Graveyard. Her bones had ached all the worse for how shaky her limbs were, sore and awkward from confinement in her armor. Worst of all she was so worried about her friends, whether they would be alright without her. She'd felt as though she was near the end more than once, but somehow she kept going. And then, when it should have been all over, a friend reached out to help her. She hadn't known him for long, but something about him though made her feel like things would somehow work out alright.

 

It was nice to know that someone had taken the care to remember her.

 

_Let's join forces... See ya real soon!_ Mickey's star shard had carried him away at the most unexpected time, even at their first meeting in Radiant Garden. She was hard pressed not to be amused at the ridiculousness of it. He'd had a kind, carefree, nature, even in such a serious situation. It had been contagious. Even when he'd gone, she'd nearly forgotten how weighed down she'd been before, by her fear that she had already lost one of her friends forever.

 

As that feeling swelled again, she knew once more, with absolute certainty, that everything was going to be okay.

 

The light of her wayfinder flickered, gaining intensity with the merciful slowing of her heartbeat.

 

It was not the light itself, but rather the warmth of it, that told her she was finally saved. It was exactly what she'd felt before, the same distant warmth that ended her lonely journey, and had led an unexpected friend to her in the darkness.

 

“Mickey. That _is_ you, isn't it?” she said.

 

“The king? You know him as well?”

 

Aqua realized she'd been allowing Ansem to feel through their connection, just had she had while she was trying to help him heal his heart. As before, the light flowing between them must have caused him to experience the forgotten memories locked within. Memories he himself had once formed from similar emotions. Ansem looked as though they were so new to him, he didn't fully recognize them.

 

“Yes, he's one of my dearest friends,” Aqua would have said, but her wayfinder spoke before her. The warming blue light gave way to the shine of polished summer gold, a yellow light so sharp and airy it may as well have been a blade peeling back the sky.

 

She had been so long in the dark that, at first, she didn't know what she was seeing, as the star in her palm began to shine a beam of sun across the sea. As the glow made curtains of the sky, a white hole split the world before her, opening a doorway above the water right at the split between the shore and the deep.

 

For a moment, she felt like she did as a child, exploring the worlds at such a young age, watching the sun rise over the water for the first time.

 

The Door to Light.

 

She had only her own experience to draw upon, but even so, she felt the name of her last hope surge free from a dusty corner of her heart once reserved for Rainfell.

 

Her Master had never taught her of the dark world. It wasn't neglect. There were no legends, no studies they could draw upon. Nothing save the warning that it was a realm that could not be escaped without help. Was this what had been meant? Two to open the door? Or that she had needed help from the outside? Was it both? Was it the two of them, in such proximity, with a powerful connection to someone on the outside, that allowed the light to finally break through?

 

Ansem had recognized it as she had, she realized, as he turned towards her.

 

“Go on. You go first,” Aqua told him. It was automatic. She knew he needed it more than she did. “I'll be right behind you.”

 

She willed her magic toward the water, that it would let her new friend walk over the surface as easily as she could.

 

He was gone as soon as he stepped out across the water and into the light. The glare was so bright it was enough to make him disappear, even short strides in front of her.

 

Aqua clutched her wayfinder to assure herself that it was real, bit her lip to stop from screaming. The door was so bright, the heat so stung her eyes, that water may have boiled into tears.

 

Her waiting was over.

 

She was finally going to see the stars again. Really, truly see them, with her own eyes.

 

She stepped through the warm light.

 

She let go of the tension she'd been holding upon the water beneath her feet.

 

And she felt a surge of cold.

 

When her eyes dimmed and she could open them again, there was nothing but the dark, and it crushed itself against her.

 

She had leaned forward in search of footing, and down into the sea with a splash when there was none to be found.

 

The water was far deeper than it looked, with an abrupt drop after only a few strides beyond the shore. When she brushed hair from her face, and stood on even feet, she was still submerged to her neck. Aqua looked up. She was careful to keep her hand relaxed around her wayfinder, carefully cradling it as she pulled herself up over the water, making it solid beneath her once more, climbing back up with a kicking step.

 

That was embarrassing.

 

Too excited.

 

She'd let go too soon. One step in front of the other, that was how it was done. Don't be in such a hurry to trip over your own feet.

 

She felt the foaming of seawater scratching into her skin through her socks. The waves broke around her, crashing against the weathered boulders as always.

 

She held out a hand in front of her face, screening her sight. The light, so foreign now, stung her eyes worse than it had since she was a child.

 

It blurred her vision. So severely, she realized, that she must have misjudged her position, and missed completely.

 

That's what she told herself, clinging to hope as stubbornly as to light, to her friends, to life. But as she looked back she no longer saw a piercing veil of light cut into the atmosphere. The curtain had closed and cooled. There was only a painted wooden door. There were no other worlds lying before her, just more water and sand.

 

At first Aqua just stared, as she picked herself the rest of the way out of the water. She was wet to her shoulders, her skirts were soaked and weighed down against her skin and her damp shorts. She glanced at the door for a long moment, and then let out an uneven laugh.

 

“That was silly of me.”

 

Nothing was wrong. The door was still there, after all. She had just made a mistake.

 

She stepped in close, and pushed against the door to open it again, to walk through.

 

It refused to budge for her.

 

She pushed at it a few more times. First slow and tentative, then harsh, fast, frantic. It wouldn't move either way, and the space between her attempts became shorter and shorter, until desperation set in and made her pushes jerking and uneven. She grabbed the door handle and leaned back—sinking back, knees bent, dragging against it—before she abruptly gave up, straightened herself and slammed into it with a hard shove. She threw into it with all her body's weight.

 

It still wouldn't move.

 

Aqua staggered back, and nearly fell.

 

She felt a gauzy softness in her skull, as her arm above-the-elbow rang into unyielding wood. She had let out a cloying breath, without realizing she'd run into it.

 

“Open!”

 

Her body slammed into it once, three times more. Or maybe only twice if she didn't count the indignity of one tripping attempt. Aqua had already drawn her Keyblade before she realized what she was doing, and hacked hard against the door. She'd only meant to tap against the lock beneath the handle, and but the world tilted beneath her step, and it seemed to evade her.

 

Her shoulder buckled as the Key struck, and her arm rattled enough to make her head spin again in the other direction. She'd been working against a sprain ever since she'd fought Xehanort, failing to turn his Keyblade aside with a clean deflection during one fast exchange, and had been forced to catch it awkwardly against Brightcrest. It grew, not worse, but more bothersome as she tried to tap the lock opened again, almost parrying herself in her own frustration. Each arc was as crooked as the last and there was nothing to show for it but the clanging of steel against brass and wood.

 

“Open! Let me go home!”

 

Aqua stood back, holding her Keyblade in both hands. She drew upon its inner light, on the fragment of Kingdom Hearts carried with in all hearts. A clear beam shone from the tip of Master Keeper, and broke against the door. Nothing happened. It wouldn't even light the brass handle.

 

She realized then that she'd sent her only friend onward without her.

 

She was alone again.

 

“Why can't _I_ go home too!?”

 

Abandoned.

 

Rejected.

 

And this time by more than only her friends.

 

She pulsed her guard barrier with a shivering cry. She felt the familiar shell of magic forming around her heart itself, before it flared out of her body and toward her sword arm. She channeled it through the core of her Keyblade, launching a burst of light wrapped in a rotating orb of magic. If she were thinking more clearly, she may have hopped it would find its way through the door to give her something to anchor to, and pull herself towards on the other side with a spell.

 

She hadn't been thinking that clearly.

 

Her magic crashed against the door with enough force that the wind made her hair flap and her skirts flow, and the water she was standing in was blown far afield.

 

_So many are still waiting for their new beginning, their birth by sleep. Even me... and even you._

 

She had to brace herself atop the water, rising again around her, as the waves came back out.

 

“There was no one else for me to save. There's no one else that needs me,” she shook, with the waves beneath her feet. “I don't need to be here anymore.”

 

She looked down at her wayfinder, her reflection flickering in the glass, gold slowly giving way to blue.

 

“What did I do? What did I do wrong,” she repeated, pleading with the door, now only a door, for it to open again. “What I was supposed to do!”

 

After everything she'd _done_ for the light. Everyone she'd saved. Everything she'd given up, to keep the worlds safe. It couldn't end alone, unremembered, in the dark.

 

“I did the right thing. I know I did. I could have just let Terra fall and I wouldn't even be here, but I _didn't_. I fought for him. I saved him. Because he was my friend. Because he needed me, and it was the right thing to do. I protected Ven from Xehanort, because he needed me too. There was no one else who could have. I kept fighting even though I knew if I'd just given him up, he'd have let me go home. I told Mickey to go without me, so he could be safe. So that _he_ could go home, but if I had just given in, I could have walked through that door instead of waiting for nothing. I saved Ven and Mickey. I _saved_ them both. I wasn't throwing my life away, I was _saving_ theirs.”

 

She was breathing harder, taking quick breaths that strained her throat as she spoke. Shallow and fast. Her breaths began speeding up.

 

“I have waited, and waited, for them to come and save _me_ , and they never did. I helped restore the worlds. I have saved everyone who has ever needed me. I helped free Kingdom Hearts. Does anyone even know that? Terra asked me to help him complete it, and I refused, even though he would have helped me. Because it was what was right. I've always, always tried to do what was right. And for what, for this? So that I can die alone? Where are my friends? Where is everyone I've helped?”

 

She only then realized that she'd started breathing in less air, that her body had started taking shallower breaths to adjust.

 

“I've been down here, suffering, wasting what's left of my life, for _years_. And I didn't do any of it, I didn't _save_ them, just so they could all _leave me behind!”_

 

She felt a sense of weightlessness encroaching. It was heady. It was like something had begin lifting off of her, no longer there to hold her down. That was when she saw the dark fog.

 

She'd felt it, beyond the cracks in her heart, for too long. It had only gotten worse when Mickey left. She was pushing it out now, instinctively as she always had, whenever there was too much to simply hold it down. There was so much more, just waiting inside. She he couldn't get rid of it fast enough before more crept in.

 

“I did everything right! If this was what was waiting for me at the end, why... was I here?”

 

She said the only thing left to say, to the uncaring world around her. It made her hate herself a little bit more, for how petty the thought made her sound, in her own ears.

 

“It's just not fair,” she said.

 

At the end she stumbled, her head pounding too much to stay balanced.

 

“It isn't fair.”

 

Shadows were lifting off her in smoke. She could see it coming out of her skin. They were passing through her gloves when she looked down at her wayfinder.

 

She felt a horrible thought echo up from within her. One she couldn't make go away, until she whispered it to herself. There, alone again in the dark, how could she do anything but agree?

 

“I'm never getting out of here.”

 

“ _You'll never see the realm of light again.”_

 

“I'll never see the realm of light again.”

 

She felt strangely freer when she accepted that, as the weight continued to rise from her shoulders.

 

And it was as easy as she had once feared it would be.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I remember seeing not long after the release of Fragmentary Passage, one of Mr. Nomura's interviews where he expressed he'd had difficulty deciding how to end the game, and whether Aqua should face disappointment with stoicism, or go screaming into the void. It was something I thought about a lot while outlining this series. So, while I respect the decision Square ultimately made, a major part of this project for me was wanting to give Aqua the breakdown she never got in canon, when she's been kicked in the face by the universe one too many times to keep going. Hopefully I did it some measure of success.


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